“That’s what it looks…”Carey began mildly enough.
“Well,” Moffitt continued, “let me tell you—let me tell you all unequivocally”—his ball bearing eyes swept the assembled company “that I don’t want to leave The Institute, and I’m not going to leave The Institute—now or ever, not willingly.” He turned toward Aileen, who was watching his face with intensity. “It’s my wife who wants to leave,” he told the group, “so that she can have a house all her very own and all the horseshit modern conveniences every housewife in America has. And the two-car garage. The whole bit.” He leaned even further toward his wife, as if he were going to spring at her throat. “Well,” he said, gritting his gray, irregular teeth, “if that’s what my asshole wife wants, she can just go get it without me. Anytime she likes. I’m staying!”
Under this verbal assault, Aileen Moffitt crumbled. She didn’t cry, but her eyes, already suspiciously moist, went a bit vacant, and her thin lower lip began to tremble. Almost unconsciously, she put both balled fists to her temples, looked wildly around the room as if surrounded by a hanging jury, and then jumped up from her chair and ran to the door. After a bit of trouble with the knob, she wrenched it open and fled, leaving the door open a crack behind her.
Christ! This was better than tag-team wrestling. They certainly didn’t play by girls’ rules around here. I was wondering when somebody was going to pull a knife when a voice said: “Well, what have you got to say for yourself, asshole?”
I looked around to find out who the asshole was, and it turned out to be me. Mrs. Harold F. Fischer was leaning halfway out of her comfy chair and pointing a mauve fingernail in my direction. And I always thought she was such a nice little woman.
‘Me?” I said, as if there was some room for doubt.
“Yes you, sucker,” screamed Pops Martin’s brand-new bride, going into a Bela Lugosi impression. “We’re talking to you. Explain yourself!”
“Well,” I said modestly, “I’m just doing my job, just noodling around down here trying to serve the cause of justice and the common good. Trying to …”
“Not that crap, you lame motherfucker,” cried dear, gentle Susan Wallstrom. “We’re talking about the game you’ve been running on Rachel for the last year.”
“Game?” I said in a voice that came out in an unfortunately girlish falsetto. But I had the merest inkling what they were talking about. Somebody had obviously been telling stories. Not that I cared to discuss it at that moment, of course. I was there on business.
“Don’t try that horseshit on us, you chauvinist prick,” Susan insisted, puffing up like a Valkyrie. “You know what we’re talking about. You go over to Rachel’s, eat her food, drink her booze, play with her emotions and then split without leveling with her, you jerk.”
Then all the women in the room were on me except Rachel, who seemed to be memorizing the carpet. Harold Fischer and Don Moffitt were laying back on the oars, seemingly quite content to let me get cut up by these amazons. Hugo Fischer was playing the paterfamilias and keeping his hands clean.
I sat there feeling like one of Genghis Khan’s boys being raped by a nun. I don’t ordinarily mind being called a whole bagful of motherfuckers; it’s part of life. But for these ladies to ratpack me before I even knew the rules of the game seemed a bit unfair. Apparently, in the sitch, anything went, up to and including character assassination and lies, but the action stopped just short of blunt instruments.
But even my fabled tolerance had begun to wear a bit thin when the yapping died down a little and Susan said: “What about you, Rachel? You just sit there while we badmouth Joe. You’ve moaned enough about the way he’s treated you, but now that he’s here in a sitch with you, you’ve got nothing to say. Is that right?”
The room fell silent while we all looked at the top of Rachel’s head. Then she did just what I’d hoped she wasn’t going to do. She raised her head until her eyes met mine. They were pale eyes to begin with, a delicate astral blue, and now they were nearly opaque as they pinned me to my chair.
I tried to think of an urgent appointment that would get me out of the Karma Room, but before I could, Rachel said: “It’s true, Joe. You’ve messed me up quite a bit in the last year, coming around, going away, then showing up again, but with no commitment at all. Do you think you’ve been fair to me?”
I had no desire to look Rachel manfully in the eye at that particular moment so I was able to notice that Dr. James Carey was following the confrontation with a particular intensity. I could see that he might have a special interest in its outcome.
It was really more of a monologue than a conversation up to that point, but I knew I had to say something. I supposed I could have pretended to faint, but that mob would have probably tied me upright in my chair and carried on.
“What do you mean?” I said, just to stall a bit.
“You know what I mean, Joe,” Rachel said, warming to the job. “You’ve just been using me when it was convenient to you. Sure, it was comfortable to come over and see me, play with the kids, stay the night. You knew liked you a lot, so it was good for your ego. But what was there in it for me?”
“Look, Rachel,” I said defensively, “I never promised…”
“Don’t be so chickenshit,” cut in Genie Martin with a sneer.
“Be honest, Joe,” said Susan. “Tell the truth. That’s what the sitch is for.”
To be completely frank, that’s not exactly what I had some to The Institute to do. Not that I’m particularly dishonest. I mean, no more than the average private investigator. But I’d have rather faced a punk with a .38 in each hand than tell Rachel the truth. But that was exactly what these virtual strangers—and Rachel—were waiting for me to do.
To my own surprise, I heard my voice say: “All right, Rachel, I’ll level with you. There is no future for you and me. It’s just no good, it wouldn’t work.”
She seemed to take it well enough. No tears, no overt emotion. She even smiled drily, which, I thought, was a fine reaction for a woman being given the finger, even in a super-polite and sincere manner. I sat back, relieved that it was over. That hadn’t been so bad. I ought to try telling the truth more often. It could get to be fun.
“Why, Joe?” Rachel asked quietly, but it certainly shocked me. “Go the whole way for once.”
Why? What did she mean, why? Women didn’t ask the reasons why they’d been dumped. Not in the circles I traveled in. This was asking too much.
“Look…” I said.
“Answer her, scumbag!” screamed Genie. Someone was really going to have to talk to that girl about her mouth. Somebody was going to mistake it for a sewer one of these days. Maybe her mother didn’t tell her that nice boys don’t date foulmouthed broads more than once.
“The reasons can’t be that terrible,” chimed in Mother Fischer. “You owe it to Rachel to level with her. We won’t bite you.”
That I could believe. But not much else. Then I thought: what the hell, why not? They could kill me, but they couldn’t eat me. Cannibalism is illegal. Rachel was asking for it; maybe she should get it.
“You’re going to laugh,” I warned them.
“Try us, Joe,” said Rachel. “We could use a good laugh.”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Rachel,” I said. “There are two reasons why I can’t make it with you.”
Rachel just nodded her head and kept her eyes on my face.
“Well,” I said, still trying to think for some way to stall but failing, “the first reason is that you’re too rich. You’ve just got too much money.”
The room exploded. Everybody fell about in their seats laughing. At me. They roared, they giggled, they gasped for breath. Somebody in the Karma Room had the makings of a great comedian. Very funny. Except to me. I just sat there waiting for the general merriment to die down and hoping that I could buy them off with that tidbit of home truth. Gradually, the laughter died down.
“What else, Joe?” Rachel asked. “What’s the other rea
son?”
All right. I was getting a bit tired of this bullshit. If I was going to start telling the truth, I might as well jump in with both boots.
“Rachel,” I said, trying to take as much sting out of it as I could with the tone of my voice, “you’re just too old for me. I’m sorry.”
Silence. Deep, dark, aboriginal silence. Nobody had a thing to say. To my surprise, the expression on Rachel’s face hadn’t changed much. If it was a mortal blow, she was taking it like a stoic. She looked relieved, and I don’t think what I’d said had been as much of a surprise to her as I’d thought it would be. I was glad. I was also astonished at myself. The Institute must have really had something going for it. I’d only been around the place about ten hours, and I was already being honest.
I had a feeling that the primeval silence was going to break any second, and that one of our jolly little party wasn’t going to be the better off for it. God knows, I didn’t have much more to say, but I could imagine that the others might think of something.
Just then, Hugo Fischer’s barking baritone broke the silence. To my surprise and relief, he was talking not to me but to Dr. James Carey. Fischer accused the good doctor of spending too much time up in Sausalito wooing Rachel and not enough time doing his job at The Institute.
Slowly, deliberately, like a craftsman who really loved his job, Fischer took Carey apart verbally. He had a gift for it, all right. The others joined in with contrapuntal low blows that soon had Carey scrambling for cover.
Carey tried to defend himself, but he couldn’t very well maintain that in courting the Widow Schute he was really serving The Institute’s interests. Not with Rachel there, anyway. Finally, he gave up defense entirely, like an arm-weary heavyweight hanging on the ropes absorbing punishment, until the rest of them got bored and turned to someone else.
This someone else was Susan Wallstrom. But to my surprise, the mob, led by Fischer, didn’t harangue her, but instead softly and tenderly led Susan to examine her problem, which was in the boy-girl area, to put it politely. It seemed that, despite his dopey appearance, Mark Kinsey was pawing the earth in his eagerness to get young Susan into the sack. Susan couldn’t quite see her way clear, although she claimed she really wanted to.
It was a different Fischer I saw talking to Susan. Gone was the scowling martinet, the little tin god who knew he was firmly in control of the lives of a bunch of children and mental incompetents. Instead, Fischer was the gentle counselor, all-knowing, all-loving, all-forgiving, and very believable in the role. All else was forgotten except Susan’s problem, and Fischer took it upon himself to try to put it right. The others chimed in occasionally, but it was Fischer who carried the weight, and he did a good job of it. Susan didn’t instantly stand up and throw off her sexual hang-ups, but she did seem to feel better, and it was obvious that she gave Fischer the credit. When she looked at him, her eyes glowed with near reverence.
But just in case his kindly treatment of Susan had given the others ideas above their station, Fischer slipped on the four-ounce gloves and worked each of the others over as if they were a series of punching bags. It was quite impressive, in a sadistic sort of way.
Fischer started with Mark Kinsey, portraying him as an infantile satyr who didn’t have the human decency or compassion to allow Susan to discover how she really felt about him before trying to slip his horny hand into her undies. I had to give Fischer credit. If he could transform Kinsey into Don Juan Casanova, he was a magician.
Next was Cousin Harold. Fischer denounced him for going around bragging about his hotshot Cadillac agency when in reality he was a broken-down used car hustler who was damned lucky to have gotten into The Institute before the police or the Internal Revenue Service got him. Harold, he suggested, would be a lot better off to emulate the behavior of The Institute’s ex-addicts and forget about his sordid past. Then on to Rachel. Fischer dealt with her a bit more lightly than he had the residents, but he put on his Chief Thundercloud face when he accused her of playing the dilettante, dipping into The Institute but then running back to her luxurious life in Sausalito. Rachel, Fischer said, had better make up her mind which world she wanted. “You’d better,” he cautioned her, not unkindly, “shit or get off the pot, little lady.” Not eloquent perhaps, but to the point.
Fischer looked around the room to see if there were anybody left unwounded. He seemed satisfied that he’d made the rounds but then spotted Mrs. Cousin Harold—I never did find out if she had a first name—sheltering behind a massive, motherly bosom. Almost as an afterthought, he advised her to “stop wandering through the halls like Lady Macbeth wringing your hands and mourning the loss of your 20-cubic-foot freezer, Axminster wall-to-wall carpeting and Wednesday afternoon Mahjong orgies.” Mrs. Harold agitated her wattles, willing to admit to any sin just to get off the hot-spot.
I noticed that Fischer had passed right over Pops and Genie. Perhaps it was just as well. Pops was nodding in his chair, nearly asleep, and Genie didn’t look in the mood for serious introspection. If anything, she looked a bit apprehensive, but somehow I didn’t think it was a case of virgin’s jitters.
Apparently sated, Fischer heaved himself out of his armchair and announced: “Well, I suppose we’d better go join the others in…”
I never did learn where they were going to join the others, because I was up and out of the door in record time. I wasn’t eager to look Rachel in the eye in the immediate future, and there seemed no better time to take a little walk. I was halfway down the hall when they followed me out of the room like passengers leaving a crowded subway, all together yet beginning to break into ones and twos.
I heard a voice behind me call: “Joe.” It was Rachel’s voice, and I kept going.
10
Without actually running, I moved away from the Karma Room as quickly as possible. A convenient flight of stairs led down to the ground floor and a side door out into the cool darkness surrounding the big building. After a few minutes, it wasn’t so dark. The stars were bright in a clear sky, and a gibbous moon was doing its best. The rich scent of flowering manzanita hung lightly on the soft breeze.
Behind me, the sound of chattering voices was rising, but as far as I could see I was the only one at large. I began to move away from the side of the building toward the big front lawn where the wedding had been held that afternoon. But then out of the darkness at the far edge of the lawn came two figures in gray overalls with white armbands moving with the traditional measured pace of a security patrol. They were walking with their heads together, one tall and white, with hollow, sucked-in cheeks, the other shorter, black and gesturing with barely concealed agitation.
For no particular reason, I ducked into the shadows to wait until they passed. I suppose I could have danced out into the moonlight, introduced myself and inquired of their health, but there was something about The Institute that was already turning me into a lurker. So I stayed there, enjoying the darkness, until they’d passed—the big one moaning about some grave injustice, the little one chiming in with a chorus of: “Yeah, but bullshit, man…”
Once they’d disappeared around the side of the mansion, I straightened up and stealthily made my way along the edge of the lawn, keeping well in the dark patches, until I was able to reach the orderly grove of cypress pines at the far end. From there I admired the mansion aglow with light.
I strained my ears, but couldn’t hear a thing from the mansion. The only sound in the night was the rushing of the waves against the rocks and the occasional distressed night bird. Now what, Goodey? I asked myself. You don’t particularly want to talk to Rachel Schute right now, but what are you doing out here? How is this going to help Fred Crenshaw?
No answer. I turned away from the mansion, and something deeper in the trees caught my eye. I blinked and it was gone. Then it was there again—a spectral figure with a flash of white. That was either a ghost, or somebody was out there whom I hadn’t yet met. I like making new friends, so I started moving away from the mansio
n and the sea, my eyes searching for the specter. I saw it again, but then lost it, and soon I found that I was following a faint path taking me in a northerly direction along the coast, rather than away from it.
What’s more, I was climbing, as my protesting legs and lungs began to tell me, and the ground underfoot was getting rockier. The trees were thinning, too, and eventually there were more rocks, even boulders, than trees. The moon over the sea was on my left now, peeping at me through diminishing foliage. Then the trail jogged to the left, and I came out onto a clearing at the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea, the rocks and the mansion tucked neatly below among the breaking surf. From the edge I could see most of the terrace from which Katie Pierce had taken her big fall.
There was a sound to my right, and when I turned to investigate, something hit me behind the left ear, and the starry heavens began to fold in over my head like a collapsing tent. The rocky ground rose up to meet me.
When I opened my eyes, the stars were gone. They’d been replaced by a Fourth of July fireworks exhibition on the inside of my skull. I tried to raise my hands to ward off the rockets but found that they were tied behind my back. I tugged as hard as I was able, but only succeeded in giving my legs, which seemed to be up behind my shoulder blades, a painful wrench. Uh oh. A still, small voice told me that someone had hogtied me. And done a professional job of it, too.
I swiveled my head to the left, removing a few useless layers of skin, and found that someone was looking at me with a gleeful expression. In the dim, dim light of an oil lamp behind him, all I could see was a demonic grin, a pair of glittering eyes and an exuberant white beard that seemed to be full of electricity. My phantom.
“So you’re awake, are you, you son of a bitch?” he said.
“I think, you’ve made a little mistake, sir,” I said. I make it a practice always to be polite to people who have me hogtied. It works out better that way.
Charles Alverson - Joe Goodey 02 - Not Sleeping, Just Dead Page 9
